Lent Begins!

Introduction:

Today is the first day of the forty day period we know as Lent. This day is known as Ash Wednesday. For the next 40 days (Sundays are not included), I will be posting a meditation. For the first week, the theme will be Confession, Forgiveness and Reconciliation. We will think and pray about what confession means to us, why it is a spiritual discipline and why confession is good for us. I look forward to sharing this Lenten time with you. I pray that these meditations may be a aid to your spiritual discipline during Lent.

Reflection for Lent Day 1: Ash Wednesday (February 17)

Theme for the Week: Confession, Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Passage for the Day: Daniel 9:3-4

³Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. ⁴ I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession.

Reflection:

Today, we enter Lent with Ash Wednesday. In my faith tradition, when we come to worship on Ash Wednesday, we are offered the opportunity to confess our sins and have ashes placed on our forehead. Among the various interpretations, ashes can be a sign of repentance, purification, mourning or even an acknowledgement of our mortality. In Old Testament times, people placed ashes on their foreheads as a sign of mourning and also as a sign of repentance. In the Scriptural passage which is the basis of this reflection, Daniel seeks God’s help by engaging in prayer and confession. As signs of his humble approach to God, he wears sackcloth, a dark, uncomfortable fabric made of goat hair, and he puts ashes on his body. When you have ashes placed on your forehead, what do they mean to you? For you, are the ashes a sign that you have been marked with the cross of Christ, the sign first placed on your forehead in baptism? Or are they a sign of your mortality, or a sign of your repentance?

Why do some faith traditions, such as the Lutheran Church, in which I serve, encourage worshippers to confess their sins, either with a group confession, personal reflection, or individual confession? In a confession of sins, we acknowledge before God that we have done things which have hurt ourselves or other people, or that we have failed to do things which would have helped someone else. We admit that we have not been able to live up to God’s full expectation for us. We don’t confess the things we have done wrong in order to make ourselves feel bad or to beat ourselves up. We confess so that God can restore us. God releases us from the torment of the things we have done wrong or neglected to do. God frees us from the power of wrong doing so that our lives can be turned around.

I like to think of the ashes on my forehead as a sign that God has purified and cleansed me. The words to a hymn that our choir is singing in worship tonight sum things up for me. (This song was written by Tony Alonso and produced by GIA Publications.) When I hear the choir sing “Sign us with ashes, merciful God. Sign us and make us your own,” I feel the ashes on my forehead and remember that that God loves me and forgives me. I remember that God has made me God's own in baptism. I look forward to the Lenten time as a way of reclaiming my identity as a baptized child of God.

Think about the ashes you might receive on your forehead and pray about what they could mean to you and what God’s action in your life means.

Prayer Themes for the Day

Pray for yourself that the Lenten season which begins today might be a time of reflection, repentance and reconciliation. Pray that you will be able to allow God to work in your life, releasing you from anything that is troubling or imprisoning you. Pray that in your confession and repentance, God will turn your life around.